the tide's acute weaving murmur
by iloveyou123
Summary: A story told in fragments. Sam/Freddie, Carly/Sam, Carly/Freddie. Carly-centric. / "She imagines tasting Freddie is what it is like to taste your own sorrow, to put a tear on your fingertip and touch it with your tongue."


the tide's acute weaving murmur

A story told in fragments. Sam/Freddie, Carly/Sam, Carly/Freddie.

* * *

::

.

_but you won't let me let you go_

_._

::

It's not nearly as messed up as it sounds like, she wants to say to the divorce lawyers, though it's not like they would listen. It's not as crazy and insane as you want it to be.

(in other words- please don't publish this to magazines just because i happen to be a news reporter.)

She sighs instead, pale hands pressing into the dark table beneath her.

(Okay. Where do I-)

Right here, they direct her, and she pushes the pen harder than necessary into the whitewhite paper. It reminds her of when she was little and would watch Snow White, blankets wrapped around her and hot chocolate in one hand, Spencer sitting next to her, laughing more than she would.

I don't get it, (younger) Carly would say, and he'd ruffle her black hair (like the steel of the cauldron that the Witch owned), still half chuckling.

It's just- he'd giggle- you'll get it when you're older, Carls.

She watches it again with Sam, once, drunk- but that's a different story, for a different time (never) (lips sliding skin pushing slipping fingertips trailing on her hip) (no).

(Spencer was right, that movie is different when you watch it as an adult- if she can call herself that- it's a lot dirtier than she would have suspected.)

Carly clicks the pen, twice- Please send these to Freddie Benson, she tells them.

Her voice is more tired than she remembers it being. The lawyers nod.

::

When Carly turns seventeen, she goes out with Freddie for the first time.

Fine, She had said, eyes rolling, But Freddie, do not expect this to turn into anything!

He had nodded in acceptance, handed her another Peppy Cola without a word.

He took her out the next night, seven o' clock (sharp, she could hear Mrs. Benson yelling from across the hall). They went to a restaurant. It was nice.

But that was all it had been. (She ends up dating Freddie for the next two years, seventeen, eighteen, nineteen, three ages, she has three birthdays while dating Fredward Benson).

He kisses her at the end of the night, and it is soft and sweet and (unexplainably) sad. She imagines tasting Freddie is what it is like to taste your own sorrow, to put a tear on your fingertip and touch it with your tongue.

Freddie, she whispers, hand on his neck, I don't think-

Shh, he replies, it's been my dream since I was eight. Let me live it.

(She does.)

(She lays across from Sam, the next night, and tells her about it. Sam laughs in all the wrong places, but if she hadn't, Carly wouldn't have loved her, anyway.)

Sam never quite gets okay with the sight of them holding hands.

::

(sam dies on the fourteenth of december, two years after carly shay becomes carly benson.)

They get a letter in the mail, Freddie reads over her shoulder and she drops her glass. It shatters over their feet, blood dripping down the sides, stark against their skin.

Dead, Freddie says, and then repeats it, dead.

(no, carly had thought, no. it could not be true.

in her head she counted down all the ways the letter could be wrong.)

Carly stands on the rooftop of their building for two hours before Freddie gets her down. She is soaked through with rain and sleet. Her teeth are chattering.

Freddie repeats her name like a mantra, like it will get her to be okay again-

(this is who you are, C-A-R-L-Y S-H-A-Y or benson, don't forget it, don't forget it.)

Carly does not speak one word for the next sixteen days. Freddie makes her tea, leads her to the couch.

It's going to be okay, he says, but he's crying, too, and Carly kisses him just to get him to stop talking.

(no, she thinks, it really, really won't.)

::

Carly knows Sam better than she knows anyone in the world, she realizes one day.

(Blonde hair and blue eyes, smirks and laughter, ham- honestly, it's all she's ever known, since she was knocked off a seat by a tiny maniac.)

Do you ever worry, she asks the girl, while they're sitting on a bench outside of Groovy Smoothie, legs tangled together, what will happen when we go to college?

Sam pauses, shrugs. I don't know, she says, her voice floaty, I guess I just-

What? Carly questions, watching Sam bite her lip, pink blooms underneath white.

I guess I never really thought about it, Sam says.

Carly almost tells Sam something, but she's not really sure what she wants to tell her. (words are at the edge of her tongue, though she can't grasp them)

Mhm, Carly hums, Yeah, me neither.

Sam steals her smoothie.

::

Carly and Freddie get married because there is nothing else for them to do. They are nineteen when he asks.

Carly looks at him, for a little (she won't lie and say she doesn't love him, she does, she does, but it's not- when she kisses him she tastes graveyards, cemeteries, lingering at the edge of her mind).

Sam stands on the sidelines, one hand gripping the edge of the table next to her.

(Freddie glances at Sam once, right during his proposal speech, and for his sake, she pretends not to notice.)

(The thing is, they both look at Sam, and Sam does not look at either of them.)

Carly says yes, laughs and cries, wraps her arms around Freddie, presses her cherry lips to his, (they are like mirror images, slightly, skewed, like broken reflections).

(carly hugs sam then, grabs her as tight as she can, so neither can breathe.

_when sadness was the sea, _carly whispers in the shell of sam's ear, _you were the one who taught me to swim_

sam acts like she doesn't understand, but carly is okay with that by now.)

::

"How could you leave me like that?" Carly yells angrily into the phone.

Static buzzes.

She can picture the other girl shrugging, cigarette dangling off slender fingers. "Did you really think I would stay?"

"Tell Freddie I say hi," She says venomously, before slamming the receiver down.

She can almost hear Sam's response, but it, like everything else,

fades.

::

(She spends an afternoon reading ee cumming poems to Sam, skin pressing against skin, her head leaning on her shoulder.

Carly starts every one like this: This one is for you.

She means them all.)

(but she's always been too much of a damn romantic.)

::

Freddie wraps his hand around her slim wrist, murmurs into her ear,

I've loved you since the day I met you.

Carly laughs, tongue tracing his neck,

Oh, Freddie, and her voice is happy, I know.

::

Sometimes, Carly would catch Sam and Freddie holding hands under the table.

She doesn't think either of them even realized, or perhaps they were too aware, nerves on end, like sparks of a fire- Sam's nails might be painted blue and chipped, curled around Freddie's bruised fingers.

Carly set the glasses down for dinner extra hard, on these times, let the silverware rattle and shake them apart.

(The clock chimes twice, numbers sink. Carly is never sure, during these moments, if she is the victim or the villain.)

(maybe she's both. maybe they all are, different versions of the princess and the witch and the knight, spinning and falling, twisting.)

::

She thinks, if someone were to peel off all the extra layers she puts on (make up, lies, clothes, stories), they would find nothing.

Carly worries that she is made up of other people, other people's wonders and dreams and lives and if someone were to strip her of these things, she would just-

disappear.

Carly Shay has always been lost.

::

Carly lives after Sam's death.

She does not expect to. (she buys a gun and it's nice and metal and she walks herself to the roof and stands on the edge and she counts out pills in her hand heavy in their weight and she fucks freddie with these thoughts in the back of her mind-

i could die tonight. i could choose.)

She visits Sam's grave once a month, until Freddie tells her he doesn't think she should anymore.

She knows he can't bear to even say Sam's name, so she says it as much as possible until he slams the door on his way out. The walls tremble.

(Carly picks up the bottle of pills, once, twice. Sets it down again.)

::

I kissed Sam once, Freddie tells her, a year and two days after Sam's funeral.

Carly presses his fingers to her own. Yeah, she says, So did I.

::

She leaves him. Goes to Paris.

(it was always one of her dreams, and besides, their story is already written-

_boy meets girl. boy loves girl. girl loves boy. girl leaves._

She can hear Sam laughing. _God, Carls, way to be cliche._

She finds Sam's not voice is fainter in her head than it was before. She thinks it's odd.)

::

Carly writes Sam a note, Freddie writes Carly a note, and Sam writes one to Freddie.

She wonders, later, if it was always going to be this way, if it was destined.

(She can't imagine _not _feeling the way she does about Sam, about Freddie.)

::

She comes back to Freddie, four years and six weeks after Sam's death.

He kisses her cheek, she closes her eyes.

I loved her, she whispers, and he nods.

Yes, Freddie tells her, I know.

But I loved you too, she replies, did you know that?

He wraps his arms around her.

She mumbles into his collarbone, We all loved each other.

Carly slips the ring into his palm.

Thanks for coming back, he tells her.

Yeah, she says. Well.

::

Clocks chime.

::

fin.


End file.
